


five things victor nikiforov is good at (and one thing he is not)

by eachandeverydimension



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Cooking, Driving, Fluff, Kissing, Languages, M/M, Piano, Sewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8909980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eachandeverydimension/pseuds/eachandeverydimension
Summary: Victor Nikiforov is a man of many talents.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iateyouroreos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iateyouroreos/gifts).



> Banged this out in one day (ish) for iateyouroreo's birthday! Surprise, happy birthday and enjoy!




“Mom, have you seen Victor around?” Yuri yells, poking his head into the main dining hall of the inn.

“Yuri, I’m here!” he hears Victor’s voice chime out from the direction of the kitchen.

When Yuri steps into the small kitchen of the inn, the sight that lies in front of him is so surprising that his brain takes a moment to process it. His mother is standing to the side, carefully jotting down something in a notebook, while Victor is standing at the kitchen counter, apron on and arms akimbo triumphantly.

“Just in time! Yuri, do you want to help me make borscht? I’m teaching Hiroko-san,” Victor says. There’s a spread of ingredients in front of him like in a cooking show: beets, potatoes, carrots, cabbage and onions.

Somehow, Yuri gets roped in by Victor’s enthusiasm and is recruited as a reluctant sous-chef, while his mother is appointed note-taker. Mostly Yuri’s job just involves stirring the pot and handing Victor ingredients though, because Victor is _scary good_ at cooking.

His hands move lightning-fast as they slice up an onion. Victor’s eyes don’t even water, that’s how quick he is. With an equally efficient action, he sweeps the sliced onion off the cutting board with his knife into the skillet, which is already sizzling with diced carrot. Effortlessly, Victor tosses the food in the skillet, to a chorus of _woahs_ from Yuri and his mother.

When he judges the carrots and onions done and finishes stirring ketchup into them, Victor turns his attention to the cabbage. Within a matter of minutes the cabbage is shredded, thanks to Victor’s quick fingers and a mandolin. The beets, boiled beforehand and gently steaming, are peeled into strips and added back into the pot, where the diced potatoes are already stewing. Everything else goes into the pot: lemon juice, pepper, bay leaves, chicken stock, kidney beans. Yuri places each ingredient into Victor’s waiting hand as he recites their names.

After the final five minutes of cooking when Victor takes over stirring the pot, Victor, Yuri and Yuri’s mother each take a spoon and taste the borscht.

There’s a pause.

“ _Vkusno!_ ” They exclaim as one.

Victor has that heart-shaped smile he gets when he’s near euphoric, and Yuri hopes he can pass off the redness in his cheeks as a flush from leaning over the simmering pot and stirring it for half an hour.




“Um, Victor, are you free?” Yuri asks, knocking on Victor’s door. “I have some suggestions for the step sequences.”

Victor had gone into his room right after dinner, rather uncharacteristically. Usually he sat out in the main room and watched whatever was on the television: variety shows or sports matches in Japanese, laughing and cheering whenever the other patrons did.

“Come in, Yuri! Just hold on for a second and let me finish this…” Victor says.

When Yuri opens the door, Victor is hunched over in his bed, all four lamps switched on and bathing him in too-bright light. He’s squinting down at something in his lap, fingers moving quickly. There’s a glint of metal, and Yuri realizes that Victor is sewing. The material draped over Victor’s lap Yuri recognizes as a shirt he’s seen him wear many times. The navy material of the shirt has been worn thin by the sheer number of times Victor’s worn it, and peeking out from the collar Yuri can see a faded clothes tag, text no longer legible from many washings.

Victor looks up when Yuri enters and says with an apologetic smile, “Sorry, Yuri. I have to mend this hole. This will only take a short while!”

Victor is working on a small hole on the sleeve seam of the shirt. He looks focussed, like he does when he’s skating. In his hands, the pins and needles Victor is using flash, and he’s done in a matter of minutes. The shirt looks as good as new, apart from its rather threadbare material.

“Woah. I didn’t know you could sew, Victor. Where did you learn that?” Yuri asks.

As Victor holds the shirt up for inspection, he replies, “I taught myself over the years. As you can tell from the way I kept all my costumes, I’m a sentimental person. Besides, this shirt is really comfortable.”

Satisfied with the quality of his mending, Victor folds the shirt and turns to face Yuri. “You were saying about your step sequences?”




“Wow, I didn’t know there was a storeroom here,” Victor says. “The inn sure is big, huh?”

The two of them are in one of the many storerooms of the inn. It’s a rare rest day for Yuri, and he’s helping out at the hot springs. Victor decided to tag along and help Yuri in his errands; he’s been in Hasetsu for four months, and seen most of what the city has to offer.

Yuri’s father asks them to decorate for Tanabata, and Yuri is in the middle of explaining the festival to Victor when they reach the storeroom for less-frequently used items.

“There’s a legend which says there are two stars in the sky which are forbidden lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi. They can only meet once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, which is Tanabata. On that day, magpies which are moved by Orihime’s tears form a bridge for the two lovers to meet in the centre of the Milky Way,” Yuri says as he sorts through the stacks of labelled cardboard boxes. “That’s just the story anyway. Mostly people write wishes and hang them on bamboo trees.”

Victor is largely useless in this task because he can’t read Japanese. So he pokes around instead. From where he’s hidden behind an old kotatsu, Victor says, “It’s August now, though.”

“Well, that’s because it follows a lunar calendar,” Yuri replies. The lanterns and mats for _hanami_ should be right next to the decorations…

“Yuri! There’s a piano here!” Victor shouts from the innermost corner of the storeroom.

Yuri looks up to where Victor is pointing. Underneath the dust cover, there does appear to be the shape of an upright piano.

“I thought they threw it away. It used to be Mari-nee’s.” A family friend had given it to them, and their parents thought maybe Mari would like a hobby too, since Yuri had skating. Mari had taken three lessons and never touched the piano again. It disappeared from its spot in the main room not long after, and Yuri always thought his parents had given it away to someone else.

“Hm, it’s probably out of tune by now…” Victor says pensively. He’s got a finger on the centre of his bottom lip, and after a moment, he whips the dust cover off.

It sends dust flying everywhere, and the both of them into coughing fits. By the time the dust settles, and Yuri uncurls himself from where he was bent-over coughing, Victor is sitting on the piano bench.

“Sorry, I guess that was a bit too dramatic,” Victor says sheepishly. “Sit next to me, Yuri!”

Yuri does. The bench is too low and too small, and their thighs have to press together to fit both of them. Victor is too focussed on the keyboard, tapping and holding different keys, to notice Yuri’s staring. There’s a slight frown between Victor’s eyebrows whenever he hits a note he doesn’t like, and dust motes clinging to his clothes everywhere. On his lips too, is a grey mark from dust, right in the middle. Yuri wants to lick his thumb and wipe it off for Victor.

Then Victor straightens his posture, and lays his hands gently on the keyboard with a flourish. It reminds Yuri of the moment right before starting a routine, when the performer in him kicks in.

And Victor starts to play a familiar song. It sounds slightly off, even to Yuri’s untrained ears. But it’s undeniably the starting bars of _Yuri On Ice_. Yuri has heard the piece and practiced to it too many times to count, there’s no way he wouldn’t recognize it.

Victor’s right hand, the one further away from Yuri, is dancing across the keyboard. Yuri’s body has an almost Pavlovian response to this music by now, and his body remembers the muscle memory of this routine. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine himself on the rink. His body knows exactly when to step, when to turn, the precise sensation of tension in his body before he jumps. When they reach the part where violins and accompaniment joins in, Yuri can imagine it merging in with Victor’s piano seamlessly.

Victor plays all the way through the first half, until the violins fade off. This is usually the part where Yuri starts to tire, and even though he’s not actually skating, he can almost feel the fatigue set into his muscles. Yuri’s eyes have slipped shut without him noticing, and in his mind he can see every move, every element. First an outside eagle, then the Ina Bauer, followed by a jump. A step sequence, then another jump-

Except that jump never lands. Victor stops playing, and Yuri’s eyes open.

“Man, this piece is way too hard. I’m too out of practice for this. The piano sounds awful too,” Victor says. He doesn’t seem to have noticed the visceral response Yuri had to the music.

“I didn’t know you could play the piano, Victor,” Yuri says, still trying to shake off the sense of incompleteness he feels from the abrupt end. It feels like he took a step in his dreams, but woke up before it could land.

“I took some lessons when I was little. I was pretty good at it, but I could only pick one out of piano and skating, so I chose skating,” Victor says. There’s some wistfulness in his voice as he says this, and he’s staring down at his hands on the keyboard.

“I think your playing is just as beautiful as your skating,” Yuri says.

A small smile appears on Victor’s face. It’s not quite the fake smile he gives interviewers during the kiss-and-cry, or one he rubs against Makkachin’s fur when the poodle does something extra lovable. It’s the smile Yuri sees sometimes, when it’s just two of them at the seaside and they hear the seagulls that Victor says remind him of St. Petersburg. There’s a tinge of sadness in Victor’s eyes when he looks up and says, “Thank you, Yuri.”

Victor heaves a small sigh, and stands up. After he’s done covering the piano with the dust cover, he turns to Yuri and says, “Well, let’s go find those decorations, shall we?”




In the few months that Victor had been in Hasetsu, his Japanese improves by leaps and bounds. When Yuri looks back on that first week, with Victor speaking mostly in English and relying on gesticulations to get his message across, and at Victor now, he’s kind of amazed at his progress.

“ _Makkachin wa watashi no inu desu_ ,” Victor says, squatting in front of a little girl. He’s speaking slowly and enunciating extra carefully to make his accent less obvious. From where he’s standing at Victor’s side, he can see the proud smile that appears on Victor’s face when the little girl lets out a sound of comprehension, and says, “Makkachin!”

She’s staring up in wonder at Makkachin, who’s taller than her. Makkachin barks happily when he hears the little girl say his name, and the girl startles a little, but reaches a little hand out to pet anyway.

Seeing the little girl’s reluctance, and her questioning gaze at Victor like she’s asking permission, Victor says, “ _Ii desu yo_.”

After the little girl has her fill of petting Makkachin’s soft chocolate fur (and Makkachin has his fill of licking her hands), Victor turns to Yuri and says, “Come on, Yuri. No slacking off now. To the Ice Castle Hasetsu!” and he cycles off, Makkachin bounding in his wake.

Come to think of it, Victor is always asking Yuri what the words for something in Japanese is. On their daily trip to Ice Castle Hasetsu, Victor will slow down his pace and drop back until he’s alongside Yuri, long legs working the peddles smoothly.

“Yuri, what’s ocean in Japanese?” Victor will ask, pointing out at the wide expanse of blue sea they’re skirting.

“ _Umi_ ,” Yuri huffs out.

“Hmm, _umi_ ,” Victor says.

Then Victor speeds up his pace once more, and beckons at Yuri with one hand. “Come on, Yuri! You’re doing great.”

Later, when they’re in the ice rink and Yuri is just stepping in to the main stadium after tying on his skates, he’s almost sure he hears Victor repeat under his breath, “ _Umi_. Sea. _Morye_.” Then Victor notices Yuri, and waves him onto the ice rink to start his warm-ups, and Yuri’s mind is too full of ice, and step sequences, and triple axels, to think on this topic anymore.




“Ah…” Yuri says when Victor pulls back from their kiss. He doesn’t want it to stop.

Kissing with Victor is different from the other times Yuri has done it. It’s like a marshmallow, soft and sweet and melting. Yuri is sure that Victor can feel his pulse thundering, where he has three fingers pressed into Yuri’s neck, angling his face up.

Yuri can’t keep himself from smiling, and their teeth knock together when Victor comes back in for a second kiss. Victor presses a quick peck against the edge of Yuri’s smile. There’s a small huff of air from Victor that he feels against his cheek, before Victor bends lower. He tilts Yuri’s face higher, and presses his soft lips into the space where his jaw meets his neck. The sensation of Victor’s nose dragging along Yuri’s skin as he moves back to kiss Yuri’s eyelid sends shivers down his back.

“Yuri… I can’t stop kissing you,” Victor says, in between kisses to Yuri’s hairline, and his cheek, and his nose.

Yuri looks up at Victor. He probably looks crossed-eyed because of their proximity. He can see Victor’s silver lashes at half-mast, his eyes glazed and a flush rising in his cheeks.

“Don’t stop,” Yuri says, before he pulls Victor in for another kiss.

    +1.  

“Are you serious?” Yuri says.

Victor is fidgeting, his fingers nervously twirling the car keys of the rental car as he continues to stammer out excuses. “- and well, I just never really saw the point of learning, and Russia is always really snowy and it’s scary to drive in the snow, so _couldyoupleasedrivebecauseican’t_.”

Yuri would slap a palm to his head, but he’s pretty sure that would make Victor start blubbering even more excuses, so instead he holds a hand out for the keys. “Alright, give them here.”

Victor heaves a sigh of relief and all but slaps the keys into Yuri’s hand.

They’re here in St. Petersburg to sightsee after the Grand Prix Finals. There’s some time until the skating season starts again, and Victor wanted to show Yuri his hometown. Makkachin is back in Hasetsu with Yuri’s family. Victor had been ready to pack all of Makkachin’s things and bring him along, until Yuri questioned the ease of bringing a poodle into the Hermitage. After a long pout and a five-minute cuddle with Makkachin, Victor finally agreed to leave him behind. Before they left, Victor held Makkachin’s face in his hands, their noses pressed together. He whispered a lot of Russian to Makkachin, and finally said, with an absolutely serious tone, “No steamed buns this time, Makkachin. I mean it.”

Now, after almost twenty-four hours on aeroplanes, first stopping in Beijing then Moscow for connecting flights, all Yuri wants is to go to Victor’s old flat and sleep in a proper bed. He went to rent a car while Victor collected the luggage. When Yuri got back, he handed the car keys to Victor and asked him to bring them back to his flat. Which was when Victor started blushing and shuffling his feet, stuttering out reasons why Yuri should drive instead.

Yuri couldn’t believe that Victor couldn’t drive.

He clicked the car keys, and followed the cheerful beep to their rented car. Victor trailed behind, pushing the trolley with their luggage.

“I can’t believe I finally found your weakness. I thought you were perfect, but it turns out five-time Grand Prix gold-medallist Victor Nikiforov has an Achilles heel: he can’t drive,” Yuri teases.

“Yuri, you’re mean,” Victor whines as he lugs the luggage into the back of the car.

It turns out that it’s a good thing that Victor can’t drive anyhow, because he’s a terrible navigator. It takes the GPS on both of their phones, and a full hour before they reach Victor’s apartment, which is supposed to be twenty minutes away from the airport. The rush hour as dusk sets in and everyone leaves work and school makes the journey longer as well. Yuri begins to realize that what he thought was a propensity for taking Makkachin for long walks might just be Victor’s utter ineptitude at navigating.

On their third circle of the neighbourhood as Victor looks for the turn-in to his apartment block, Yuri brings back the topic of driving.

“Victor, what would you have done if I couldn’t drive?”

“Well, I knew you could drive. I saw you behind the wheel in one of Phichit’s instagrams,” Victor says.

Yuri is slowly getting used to Victor’s social media addiction, so all he does is say, “Of course you did.”

“I conducted my research on you very thoroughly before I became your coach, Yuri,” Victor says. “Ah, over there!”

It turns out to be the wrong apartment block completely, and while Yuri is pulling out into the street again Victor suddenly says from the passenger seat, “It’s not like I didn’t try to learn! I took the test when I turned eighteen, but I failed it. Yakov told me to focus on skating first, since I’d just won my first Grand Prix, so I decided to retake the test during the off-season. But I failed two more times so I decided to give up.”

When Yuri glances over at the passenger seat, Victor looks embarrassed, and slightly upset. Not with Yuri, but maybe with admitting that he has weaknesses. Then Victor finally spots the right entrance, and the topic is shelved while they park the car and carry their luggage up to Victor’s apartment.

Victor is in his kitchen, opening cabinets to check for spoiled food when Yuri comes up behind him and winds his arms around Victor’s middle.

Victor pauses, hand still outstretched to close the cabinet above the sink. “Yuri?”

“I like that you can’t drive. It make me think ‘ _ah, Victor is human too’_. So there’s no need to be embarrassed,” Yuri says, voice slightly muffled because he’s squished his face against Victor’s warm back. St. Petersburg is so _cold,_ and Yuri is completely jet-lagged. Yuri’s brain is telling him it should be the middle of the night, but outside the kitchen window the streetlights are just starting to switch on.

Yuri hears a huff of amusement, then Victor spins around in his embrace so he’s facing Yuri. He’s smiling, a gentle sort of smile that only comes out around Yuri, and he says, “Thank you, Yuri.”

Then his arms come up to wrap around Yuri, and Victor tucks his chin over Yuri’s head, and it feels like everything is alright in the world. Yuri is still super jet-lagged and _thisclose_ to falling asleep on Victor, and they still have to unpack their luggage, and set an alarm to wake up and video call Yu-topia when it’s not the middle of the night in Japan. But for now, Yuri can hear Victor’s heartbeat where his ear is pressed against his chest, and Yuri thinks, _we’ll be all right_.

**Author's Note:**

> The recipe I used for Victor's borscht: http://natashaskitchen.com/2010/09/26/classic-russian-borscht-recipe/
> 
> Makkachin wa watashi no inu desu: Makkachin is my dog
> 
> Ii desu yo: it's alright; go ahead


End file.
